Nightmares
by themonosyllabicgirl
Summary: Hey guys I'm back, and with a new penname (used to be joaquin's phoenix). Merrill has to escape from the nightmares that have been plaguing him, but sometimes, its not that easy...
1. Default Chapter

Hey guys - I'm back, (with a new penname)! Stupid story got deleted after I failed to update it, like, ever! Well, to be fair, I did just move to uni, so writing, not first thing on my mind! But here I am, I'm back, I've slightly redrafted my stories and I sincerely PROMISE to update in the future!

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, except the ones I made up!

The sun beat down on the scorched earth. He could feel its intense heat bearing down upon his back. The silence was awesome. Not a single whisper had be heard, everyone had ceased to breathe, caught up in their collective anticipation. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, the ball was heading straight for him. The thought flashed through his mind; _should I swing or not?_ In reality there was no dilemma, of course he would swing. It felt wrong not to.

The ball came. He swung the bat. There was a deafening "crack" as ball and bat connected, and the ball soared out of the park, out of sight. The roar of the crowd filled his ears, adrenaline coursed through his veins, he'd never felt so good in all his life. He began running...

Suddenly, the scene changed. He was running outside, in the fields behind the house. He heard a scream, and saw his brother Graham already there ahead of him. The two men looked at each other, each thinking the same thing;_ it couldn't be, not again.._

Merrill Hess woke up in a cold sweat.

Every night was the same. His dreams started off normally, peacefully, but soon segued into terrifying nightmares. They were ruining his life. He hadn't been able to have a single night's uninterrupted sleep since **it** had happened. **It.** Aliens. Even now as he was saying it, it seemed so unreal to him. He found it almost impossible to believe that it had really happened. He knew that it was because it had been too terrible to comprehend, that his brain still told him that it must have been another dream. But he also knew, deep down, that it was real.

He knew that continuing to live there, on the farm, where it had all happened, made it impossible to forget, impossible to move on. He knew that he would have to leave there, or his sanity would continue slipping away, even further out of his reach. But would Graham be able cope without him? Would the kids?

_Well, they'll just have to,_ Merrill reasoned with himself._ For a long time now I've been there for him, now I need to do this for me. There's so much I need to clear from my head, not just the invasion, things even from before Colleen's accident._ He imagined the look on the kids' faces if he told them he was leaving, and cringed at the thought. He hated to do that to them, and to himself, it would just be too painful.

Then, the thought came to him. He wouldn't make anyone go through that. He would just leave, now. Sneak out while they were still asleep and leave them a note. That way, no-one could talk, or guilt, him out of going, out of doing what he needed to do.

His mind made up, he leapt out of bed and began hurriedly packing (or more accurately, throwing) his belongings into a bag. There wasn't much, his job at the gas station didn't exactly pay enough for Merrill to be able to afford lots of trinkets. He dressed quickly and scribbled a note, explaining where he was going and why, and promising to stay in touch. Then, taking one last look around his room, he picked up his bag and pulled the door closed.

But where to now?


	2. chapter 2

Disclaimer; still don't own anything.

The bus was hot. Hot, crowded and uncomfortable. But he couldn't really complain, it wasn't like he could afford better. Merrill was tired of travelling; it made him sweaty and nervous and bored. But lately it seemed he was always travelling, moving from one place to the next, never staying long, putting more and more distance between himself and the attack, physically, if not mentally. That was all he could do. It was impossible for him to rid his mind of the images, the sounds, the feelings of fear and helplessness.

Except now, there was a tiny nagging voice in his head. _Coward, _it said, _running away, giving up as usual. You're no better than the things people call you - waster, idiot, coward. You really are a class-A screw-up. _The voice then gave way to niggling doubts. Had he done the right thing in leaving? What had he accomplished really? The nightmares came just as frequently, only now he didn't have Graham to reassure him, or Bo and Morgan to distract him. If anything, he felt worse than ever.

_No,_ he told himself sternly,_ this WILL make you better, help to make you **you** again._

_It had better,_ came the other voice, _'cause it's cost you your home, your family, not to mention all your savings._

"Excuse me, but is it okay to sit here?"

A voice interrupted his reverie.

It took Merrill a second to recognise the voice as that of another human being, so lost was he in his thoughts, another to realise it had spoken in English, and yet another to register what it was the voice had actually said.

"It's just that all the other seats are taken," the voice came warily, obviously unnerved by Merrill's continued silence.

Merrill looked up to see a girl standing in front of him. She was slight and blonde, wearing a floaty summer dress and a hesitant expression. Merrill probably would have found her pretty if he hadn't been so preoccupied with the rest of his thoughts.

"Um, yeah, sure," he mumbled.

As she gratefully took her seat next to him, her face relaxed into a smile. Merrill tensed, anticipating the inevitable conversation that he nevertheless hoped she wouldn't start. He wasn't good at talking to girls nowadays. Recently, girls, like transport, had a tendency to make Merrill sweaty and nervous.

"So you're American too? That's so neat, what a coincidence! So what brings you to Mexico?"

_(Damn!)_

"Nothing, I'm just travelling," he gave, non-committally, in a vain attempt to kill the budding conversation.

"That must be nice for you," she continued, in spite of Merrill's obvious reluctance to chat, "I'm visiting family. My husband's mother lives here, she's sick at the moment. According to the doctors, her outlook isn't good."

She didn't sound remotely upset.

_Jeez! And I thought **I** was trying to kill the conversation!_ Merrill was a little shocked.

"So, where you from?"

"Pennsylvania."

"Oh, that's nice"

_Nice? What's so nice about it? Why can't she just be quiet!_

She lapsed into silence, perhaps searching for more inane questions to ask Merrill. Luckily, just then the bus ground to a halt. Merrill glanced around; it looked like an okay place to get off.

"Okay, this is my stop," he announced, standing up, thankful to be leaving.

As he tried to squeeze by her, the girl grabbed his T-shirt and pulled his head down.

"Soon they'll need you," she whispered in his ear.

Merrill got off the bus in a daze. "_Soon they'll need you" What did she mean? Who were they? _He wished he'd asked, but he'd been too stunned. Her words reverberated in his head for the rest of the day. He wandered around in a half-trance, unable to think about anything else.

That night, lying on his hard bed in his dingy motel room, Merrill became aware of an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach. It felt cold and leaden, like his stomach had turned to ice. He didn't know how to describe it, except as a **bad** feeling. Like the ones Bo used to have. He had always dismissed them as nonsense, but now he wished he could be so sure…


	3. chapter 3

As the days passed by, the feeling wouldn't subside, but then, it didn't grow any worse. It just stayed there, a constant leaden sensation in the pit of Merrill's stomach. An ever-present knot of dread that coloured his every movement. This trip was supposed to rid him of his worries, to bring an end to his feelings of horror, a remnant of the invasion. Instead, a feeling of fear had taken root. A fear of what, he wasn't sure, but fear nonetheless.

Asleep at night, the images flashed before his eyes. The crop circles in the field, the lights in the sky above Mexico, the alien at the birthday party in Brazil, the alien's fingers on Morgan, the alien gassing Morgan. Merrill saw each of these scenes in turn, with a growing terror, made all the worse by the fact that this was no nightmare, this was REAL, it had truly happened to him and his. Now and then a different picture would appear in his mind. An afternoon in the park, a night at the movies, one of his baseball games. In all these memories, one face stood out above all others. A face with eyes so dark and deep Merrill some times felt he could drown in them, a face with a smile that had lit up his whole world. One face. Charlie's.

But these visions were always succeeded by more scenes of terror from the attack, so that Merrill woke each morning feeling both fear and longing. Every morning it was the same. He'd wake in a cold sweat to find that he'd thrown the bed sheets halfway across the room in another unconscious struggle. He would shake his head and tell himself to forget the nightmares. But still the images lingered. The cold, heavy feeling remained. And each night it would start again.

This morning was worse than ever. The nightmares had been more terrifying, the memories of Charlie even stronger. This morning he had woken with tears on his cheek. Tears for what though? For himself? For Morgan? For Charlie? God, Charlie. He hadn't thought about her in a long time but recently he hadn't been able to stop. God, how he missed her. _"No", _he told himself sharply, _"dwelling on the past won't help you, the past is what you're here to get away from"_

But how can you escape your past?

Merrill got up, got dressed, forced himself to think about something else, anything else but Charlie. If he started to think about her, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop. He would just lie here in a kind of torpor, unable to move, to eat or to drink. That was how it had been before. Before the accident. Colleen's accident had stirred him to his senses, forced him to be strong for Graham and the kids. Pushed all such self-indulgent thoughts from his head. Forever, he had hoped. But no, here they were, back again, and as bad as ever.

Merrill again tried to turn his thoughts away from her. But there was only one other thing occupying his mind. Aliens. _Ok, the aliens, let's think about them._ Even they were preferable to the moping that Merrill knew would inevitably follow thoughts of Charlie. But Merrill had no solid thoughts about the aliens, all he had were questions. Where had they come from? Why attack a planet that's 70 water when it's lethal to you? Would they be back? Had they really left? All these questions and more swirled around inside his head but no answers came. The same questions had tormented him for months, ever since the invasion. Like the bad feeling he had, they persisted, only they grew in strength until they bothered him day and night.

Merrill knew that in order to make his trip worthwhile, in order to achieve what he had set out to gain - peace of mind - he would need to find the answers to these problems. But how? He was a gas-station attendant and failed baseball player from a little town in Pennsylvania, hardly one of the world's great minds. But something inside him told him he had to do it, had to at least try. He would get no rest until he got answers. So he resolved to find them, with everything he had he would search for the reasons, the solutions, no matter what it took.

But where should he start?


	4. chapter 4

"Hey baby, guess who?" Hands covered Merrill's eyes.

"Oh, I don't know, Graham? Bo? Morgan?"

"Ok smartass, you know who it is!"

Merrill turned round to find his girlfriend grinning at him.

"Oh Charlie, I never would've guessed it was you."

"Sarcasm's the lowest form of wit you know."

"Guess I'm not a very funny guy then. Seriously honey, it's great to see you. How was your trip?"

"Three hours in the car. Woo hoo. I could hardly contain my excitement."

"Now who's being sarcastic?"

Merrill made to wrap his arms around her slender waist, but she quickly turned and danced out of reach.

"Gotta catch me first!" she teased, running away.

Instead of running after her, he just stood and watched her go. After all this time, he was still in awe of her. There wasn't a single thing about Charlie that he didn't love. Her playful sense of humour, her keen intelligence, everything about the way she looked, from her loose brown curls to her long tanned legs. Deep in his heart he felt that he didn't deserve her.

"Hey baby, I've got something important to tell you" she called over, a note of earnest in her voice.

Merrill felt dread rise up inside him. He knew he needed to know what it was she had to stay, but still, something made him afraid to ask, afraid to hear her answer.

"Yeah?" he called, falteringly.

She opened her mouth to speak but her words were drowned out by a loud thud and rapidly the scene faded.

Merrill woke up on the floor. He had fallen out of bed, again. He got up quickly. The floor here was not a place he wanted to spend a lot of time; the floors of cheap Indian hostels were not the most hygienic of places.

He had come to India, where the crop circles had first appeared in search of some answers. SO far, all he had found were cockroaches, dust, and cows. Lot of cows. No-one seemed to know anything. Aliens bad, water good. That seemed about the limit to the locals knowledge, or what they could communicate to Merrill anyway. He needed more than that, much more. Why had they come? Would they come back? The same old questions Merrill had wrestled with since the invasion and was still no closer to solving. How was he ever supposed to find these things out when he didn't even know where to begin looking? He desperately wished that he could find someone who would know, someone who could lay his mind at rest.

_I'll go crazy if this lasts much longer, _he thought,_ I get no sleep, I'm constantly worrying and my thoughts are all over the place. This does not a healthy mind make._

Merrill realised that there was no way he'd get any more sleep that night. He sighed - another sleepless night - got up, pulled on some clothes, the nearest he had to hand, and lay back down on his bed. The sun would be up soon and he would be able to go out. Out to wander aimlessly as usual, Merrill had no idea how many mornings he'd spent recently just wandering the streets. This trip was failing in its task, it was making him feel worse than ever. It just gave him more time alone with his thoughts, more time to mope and beat himself up. He'd always done that - every mistake he'd ever made, the tiniest slip of the tongue, the littlest lie - all of it was liable to come back and taunt him. He reasoned with himself that once he found a way to the answers he needed he could focus, and then all this self-pity would evaporate.

He lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to come up. He thought back to times when he'd done this before; as a kid waiting to get up on Christmas Day; at school, too nervous to sleep the night before an exam; the night before Graham's wedding, terrified about making his speech; waiting to go to the hospital to see Graham and Colleen after the kids were born. He missed them so much - Bo and her cute smile, Morgan and his serious little face. He wondered what they were doing now. They were such adorable kids. Someday he'd have kids, or so he hoped. But the only person he could imagine raising a family with was Charlie and now she was gone.

Slowly the light flooded into the room, revealing it in all its grubby splendour, showing up the dust particles in the air, whirling and spinning.

_Well, this is a real palace to be prince of, _he thought bitterly.

He got up and combed his hair in the little cracked mirror he'd brought with him. He was shocked at his appearance - he was thinner, more gaunt; he'd not been eating much. His skin was darker, but coarser and his hair was long and lank. His green eyes hooded and clouded - not sleeping much either. _This has got to stop_, he told himself, _you can't continue neglecting yourself. You **have** to shake this torpor off. Stop brooding. You **will** find the answers, but not if you drive yourself crazy!_

He got up and strode out of the room, a new determination in his gait. He refused to wallow anymore. It was busy outside; market day. The locals were buzzing about everywhere, the noise was incredible. Everything seemed fresher and clearer to Merrill, as if he were noticing it for the first time, which to be honest he really was. It had all just been a background to this thoughts and memories before. He decided to explore the market, wander round, see who and what he could come across.

He walked down the main "road", the sun burning the back of his neck, heating every inch of the air until it became difficult to breathe. The road was dusty and as he walked he sent up little dust clouds into the air, like tiny red smoke bombs. The smell added to the oppressive quality of the air; the smell of so many people, animals, foodstuffs crammed into such a confined space. There were so many different smells; the hot musky smell of so many overheating bodies; the sweet spicy scent of the local food sold by market vendors, it all created an intoxicating aroma which went straight to Merrill's head. He suddenly felt hungry, his empty stomach began growling at him. He decided to go find something to eat, but not before he'd looked around the market.

Wandering around the various stalls and areas Merrill was fascinated by the variety of produce on sale, and the hugely different style of living on show. Old men haggled over the price of chickens, vegetables, grain. Old women were selling homespun rugs and homemade trinkets. Further ahead he saw a man behind a table which was covered in books. Thinking that a book would be the ideal distraction, he headed for that table. The table was covered in all sorts of languages in every language Merrill could recognise and quite a few that he couldn't. Picking up different volumes and turning them over, he saw one at the far end of the table with a name on it that was familiar. Bimbu. _Morgan's book._ Reaching out for it, his arm connected with another body, which promptly doubled up in pain.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Merrill exclaimed in English. "Not that you'll have any idea what I'm saying"

Merrill found himself looking into the startlingly blue, tear-filled eyes of a beautiful blonde girl.

"Actually, I understand you perfectly well," she said in an English accent. "Pleased to meet you, my name's Grace."


End file.
